Chapter 28
Dr. Liu quietly perused his newest patient's file: a woman suffering from a severe personality disorder. Of course it's severe, if it's enough to land her in my care. He stared at her photo. She was in her mid-thirties, with shoulder length straight brown hair and dark eyes. Her face was kind, but clearly strained from not seeking help sooner. In fact, her husband had been the one to bring her here, under false pretenses of visiting friends in the nearby colony. The ruse did not go over well and the woman had broken down sobbing the first night she spent. She'd only been here a week, but he knew she would improve well with therapy sessions and light medication over time.
So unlike a certain other patient.
Kai felt his eyes drooping as he read the scribbles on the paper. It was still early; he'd only arrived about twenty minutes ago. The night shift had finished and he already felt tired. Today is going to be a rough day.
As if in response to his thought, the doctor felt a strange chill shoot down his spine, despite the heat of the room. He shook it off. Best to keep working. First, off to see the third floor patients, then the new woman, then Azula in the afternoon…
His thoughts trailed off to the princess in her thawing cell. The guards had informed him of the most recently written page in the growing novel of her burn history and she'd had her room frozen yesterday. Kai hadn't seen her since the night of their little deal and thought she was due for a visit, seeing as Ty Lee wouldn't be coming for a while.
The doctor sighed at the Fire Lord's newest order. As much as it pained him to fulfill it, this time Kai agreed that a little space between Azula and her friend was a good idea. At least for now.
He continued reading the file and began tidying up the mass of other files he'd collected over the years. His back was turned as he put away a few large encyclopedias, when two men crashed through his door, nearly shattering the frosted glass.
Kai spun around and glared, easily irritated in the mornings. "What is the meaning of this?" He placed the remaining books on his desk and faced the men. Recognizing them from the outer gate's post, he asked again while they caught their breath, "Well?"
"Sir… Doctor... Liu," the man speaking was clutching his chest in pain and could only manage to spit out a few words at a time. His friend had his helmet tucked under his arm, while cradling his bleeding temple in his hand.
Kai's stomach sank.
"Azula's… gone."
Kai's stomach sank like a lead weight.
He flew into action immediately, grabbing the chubby speaker by the arm and dragging him into the hallway. The bleeding man followed, wincing.
"Get to Minah's office, she can help your head. You, come with me," Kai steered him past the front desk where his secretary sat reading a few letters. They began the descent to the basement floor.
Dr. Liu sped down the steps, still clutching the poor guard's arm as he took rattling breaths. His mind raced impossibly fast. Two guards, one bruised, one bleeding. This couldn't be a prank, right? She couldn't get out, how could she? They reached the bottom floor quickly and dashed to Azula's room. What did she do?
Kai pulled the door open, passing the hallway guard and leaving the winded one behind, quickly speaking to the man inside, "Has there been any trouble this morning?"
He exchanged a glance with his counterpart in the hallway at the doctor's unusually frazzled demeanor and shook his head, "No, sir. She's been sleeping since we arrived." He gestured towards the lump in the bed.
The doctor sped up to the bars, wrapping his fingers around them and craning his neck to catch a glimpse of sleek black hair or a bandaged foot poking out of the blanket. He saw no such thing and rushed to unlock and open the barred door.
Upon turning the little key and yanking back, the door creaked ominously and lurched downward, barely hanging from its hinges. When Kai noticed the dark cloth binding the door to the rest of the bars, his eyes also trailed to one of the lower hinges and saw it nearly pulverized. He shuddered and sprang to Azula's bed to throw the blankets back.
Pillows and sheets. For fuck's sake, it's pillows and sheets!
He turned angrily back to the guards, all of whom were inside the room facing him, speechless, "Sir, we didn't—"
Kai held up a hand, "Save it. When did you both get here?"
"Six thirty, sunrise, as usual."
"Was everything else as usual?"
The two men were clearly anxious and terrified that they hadn't noticed that the patient under their care was not, in fact, sleeping in her bed. One stood unnaturally still and let the other fidgeting guard do all the talking, "Y-yes, doctor. We took over for the man on nights and that's-that's really it."
At this moment, the chubby guard stammered, still holding onto his chest, "Not Izzy. Azula... armor. Azula."
Kai shut his eyes and tried to breathe. The chill from a few minutes ago had settled permanently into his spine, prickling the hairs at the base of his neck. His hands balled into fists and he glared at all of the men, "Search this place. Search this floor, the next, whatever it takes. Find that guard. And you," he spoke specifically to the chubby man, "tell the perimeter guards to fan out and search the immediate area. I doubt she'll be anywhere nearby, but it's all we can do for now. Don't put a public alert out just yet; I'll have to consult the Fire Lord on this."
Chubby nodded and set off for the ground floor while the other two split to search this one. Meanwhile, Kai shakily slumped into the chair of Azula's, formerly Azula's, guest area.
We were careful. We had all of this security added for her and it did nothing. Nothing. The Fire Lord will have my head.
He resumed looking around the room for any sign of how this could have happened. She couldn't have just broken the door. That would take impossible strength. She may have been eating well, but that doesn't mean she gained super powers. How? How?
He glimpsed a sheet of paper under the bed behind bars and a stab of sadness hit him. Ty Lee. She was already banned from seeing Azula and now this…
A shout rang out from just down the hall and Kai bolted to its source.
He sprinted to the storage closet beside the staircase and found a guard standing outside with a grim look on his now un-helmeted face.
"We need the healer."
Kai approached him, afraid of what he would find waiting on the other side of the door. He held his breath and looked, a low hiss of despair escaping through his teeth.
The man inside the door, the night shift guard apparently, was stripped to his underwear and strapped to the restraint chair Kai so often put Azula in. The doctor quickly stepped inside the tiny space and checked the unconscious man's vital signs. Still alive, good. That's good. But how did she…?
Kai noticed the red tinge creeping onto his stomach and circled around the back of the chair to investigate the probable source of the coloring.
A jagged mark spread along his lower back, bright red and weeping. Radiating out from the center were several familiar zigzag lines and Kai suddenly guessed at how she'd escaped the room. Lightning. That woman… She could do it this whole time.
He gritted his teeth and sent the guard up to fetch Minah, while he stayed and loosened the restraints around the injured man. He was alive, but his breaths were shallow and not at all convincing of good health. His forehead and chest were slick with cold sweat, skin drained of color. Kai sucked in another breath of his own, caught in a state between extreme nervousness and sickened awe at what Azula had managed to do.
Minah rushed into the tiny room, almost colliding with the chair. She gasped quietly at the sight and began her healing from a small pouch of water at her hip. Her dark blue eyes flicked over to the doctor, bent and holding his head in shocked disbelief.
Kai finally met her gaze as she coated the guard's torso in a thin suit of water. Both were speechless, but the look on her face told him that she knew exactly what had happened. She swallowed, bit her lip in a show of unease, and jerked her head to the above floors.
"You have to write—"
"I know," he paused, absolutely drowning in dismay, "I know. I'll get someone to help you move him upstairs."
With that, he left the healer to her work and took the steps two at a time to the ground floor. Two staff members had just gathered the trays from a few people's breakfasts in the common room. Kai stopped them and directed them to the basement to help Minah, stressing the urgency of the matter.
He passed by the front desk, understanding that the armor would have gotten Azula past the secretary easily. And then his shaking hand paused at the doorknob to his office, remembering the slew of guards he dismissed from their shifts less than an hour ago. The resident chill in his spine spread through his limbs and up his neck like a jet of ice water.
One of them was Azula. I spoke to her. Directly to her. And I let her walk out of here. Damn it. Oh fucking hell.
He slammed the door to his office, violently rattling the panes of glass for the second time that morning, and sat at his desk with his face buried in his hands.
Perhaps to shift the blame to someone else for a minute, the doctor suddenly became enraged with the Fire Lord. If he had allowed me to treat her better from the start, to treat her how I would any regular patient with similar issues, she might not have felt the need to do this! She felt so suffocated in here, so dreadfully forgotten and useless, that she broke out. She still needs help!
Dr. Liu let this sentiment linger for a few minutes before furiously scribbling a not-as-nasty note to the young Fire Lord, informing him of this most recent, devastating event.
It was only after he made his way to the small aviary to send the hawk, that he, again, realized someone might feel the repercussions of this worse than everyone else. Ty Lee. His brows creased at the thought and he felt his chest tighten at how she might react. A discarded painting in a cell full of her other abandoned gifts.
Clutching the letter in his hand, he fleetingly entertained the idea of going to the palace to deliver the news in person, but decided he had to remain here for now to oversee the guards' searches and begin any interior investigations. Later, he would catch a ferry and make his way to the Fire Lord.
With a terrible feeling, he tucked the wrinkled letter into a leather pouch and strapped it to a handsome palace bound messenger hawk. Stepping out of the enclosure, he released the bird and watched as it disappeared in the morning sky, towards the looming crater that was the capital city.
Through his overwhelming concern about the princess's well-being and his own injured guards, the corner of his mouth briefly twitched upwards as he thought of the elation that Azula was surely experiencing under the sun while she ran wherever she pleased. He immediately felt guilty for the thought and rushed back inside.